Chapter Text
“You’ve got to be kidding me. A fucking eighty-two?”
Olson refreshed the screen over and over again, but the number still sat boldly at the top of the page. Frustrated, he slams his laptop shut and swivels around in his desk chair. “I studied every day for three weeks and I end up with an eighty-two?”
At the motion, a stack of now-useless flashcards spills off his desk, and Olson leaves them on the floor, dejected.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, that’s not a bad grade,” Baker shrugs from his side of the room. “Most people would be ecstatic over a B.”
“Yeah, but I needed at least an eighty-eight to keep my A,” Olson groans, burying his face in his hands. He didn’t think to mention that he wasn’t most people. “This class was a total GPA killer.”
“Don’t be dramatic. An A-minus in an engineering course isn’t going to be the reason you won’t get a job after graduation. It’s a tough subject,” says Baker with a small half-smile. It kills Olson how earnest he’s being. “There’s nothing you can do about it now, so isn’t it best to just move on? You put your best effort forward, Hank. I’m proud of you.”
“Easy for you to say. Don’t you have a four-point?” Baker’s silence is his answer, so Olson doesn’t press further. He bites his lip thoughtfully, drumming his fingers on his desk. “I’m sure there’s something I could do.”
But truthfully, he had nothing. The engineering department at FreeportU notoriously didn’t respond well to grade negotiation. He hears a little voice in the back of his head— the voice of Pete McVries. “Why don’t you just suck the professor off or something?”
Yeah, Olson wasn’t going to do that. He valued his dignity even more than his grades.
“Really? Like what?” Baker raises his eyebrows, amused. “You gonna travel back in time?”
Olson stops. He looks back at Baker, an uncontrollable grin spreading across his face. “Wait, that’s actually not a bad idea.”
He gets up from his desk and starts to rummage through the drawers, pulling out an array of old, dusty textbooks. Together, they must’ve cost him hundreds of dollars, so they might as well have a purpose.
“You’re joking,” says Baker, amused. Olson shakes his head, that grin still plastered on his lips, and Baker raises his eyebrows in mild surprise. “Oh, you’re serious.”
“Why not?” Olson shrugs. He flips his laptop back open and starts scrolling through his now-graded exam. The double-digit number in the corner suddenly feels negotiable.“I have all the answers right here. I memorize them, go back to the day of the exam— three days ago— and totally ace it. Plan’s foolproof.”
“Right,” Baker says, quirking an eyebrow, but a playful smile teases his lips. “And where are you going to get a time machine?”
“I don’t know, I’ll fucking make one. How hard could it be?” Olson grabs a notebook to start frantically writing down answers, and when Baker gives him a pointed look, he continues: “You know, you’re not being very supportive. Friendly reminder that I encouraged you to pursue your dream to be an astronaut, and then again when you decided you wanted to be a detective, and then again when you changed your major to forensics even though I think wanting to work with dead bodies makes you a total fucking freak.”
“I was being supportive when I said you didn’t need an A to be proud of yourself,” Baker points out. “Besides, people have gone to the moon. It’s a realistic goal.”
“So what? People have time-traveled, too.”
“Only twice, and I’m pretty sure one of them lost a limb,” Baker says smoothly. “We don’t even know how they did it. It could be magic for all we know, plus things go wrong all the time. I do care about your safety, Hank.”
“Oh, please,” Olson waved him off with a roll of his eyes. “It’s worth a shot, isn’t it? The worst-case scenario is that I waste a few days of my life. No big deal, right?”
“Right.”
Hank Olson was a lucky man. All of his exams fell in the first half of the week, leaving him a solid four days before Sunday, when he had to go back home to Boston for the summer.
That night, he’d convinced Baker to follow him to the library so he could study for his astrophysics final while Olson did his own research. He had quite the setup— his laptop with an extra monitor, a stack of his old textbooks, and a highlighter for every color of the rainbow. It was all theory, really— it had been done before, but there was no public information on how. They’d briefly touched on some of the speculation in his introductory-level engineering classes, but Olson would need to piece the rest of it together himself.
He quickly skimmed through one of the books, letting the pages flutter down against the long table, before a semi-familiar term catches his eye: time dilation.
Of course, Olson remembered talking about it in class, but the curriculum only covered the definition and connected it to speculation around time travel. It never discussed the theories for how it could work. That is, if it was possible at all. Then it dawned on him: He was sitting right across from another STEM major, and one who was a lot more well-versed in physics.
“Hey, they ever talk about time dilation in any of your, like, space-mechanics classes?” Olson looked up at Baker for an answer.
Baker pauses for a moment, but shakes his head. “No, I think that’s more of an advanced physics thing. I think they use it to explain the atomic clocks on airplanes and satellites, but that’s not really my area. You should ask Zuck instead. I think he’s studying that stuff.”
Olson taps his pen against the table a couple times, biting his lip. Wistfully, he comments: “I think he already went home for break.”
That wouldn’t work, he thinks. He needed answers quickly, and Zuck was a notoriously absent texter. Baker watches him for a moment, lips drawn into a thin line that upturns into a small smile.
“Well, you have all the information in the world at your fingertips,” Baker shrugs and goes back to jotting down notes in that neat handwriting of his. With an exaggerated groan, Olson flips his laptop open. He doesn’t know where to begin, so he starts with a simple ‘time dilation’ and clicks on the first article he finds.
In the margins of his textbook, he notes down the formula, the known use-cases, the evidence that this could even work. After around fifteen minutes of scrolling, something clicks, and his fingers drum rapidly on the table. Baker looks up at him, cautiously: “Yes, Hank?”
“I think I’ve got something,” he splutters. “If time slows down for things moving at high speeds, do you think I could leverage that to literally shoot myself back in time?”
Baker’s eyes widen, but Olson can tell he’s genuinely considering it. “I mean, maybe. But that sounds really dangerous.”
“No one gets anywhere without taking a few risks,” Olson’s fingers move swiftly across the keyboard, trying to get more specific information. If only he could figure out how to engineer something... “I just need to find a way to, like, move so fast that I can turn time backwards.”
At this, Baker looks almost amused, and asks: “I’m picking up what you’re putting down. How do you plan to do that?”
“I guess I just have to find the thing I’ll use as my time machine, basically,” Olson shrugs. “Are you free tomorrow?”
“No, sorry, I’ve got plans with Collie,” says Baker with a slight frown.
“Shoot. I wanted to go shopping,” mutters Olson, drumming his hands on the table as he considers his options. He hadn’t told any of his other friends yet— if even big-dreamer Baker had been skeptical, he didn’t want to know how the more “I guess I could ask Ray. I think he’s all done with finals, too.”
“Good luck,” Baker shoots him a grin, eyes creasing. “He’ll definitely have some opinions. And he’d love nothing more than to share those opinions with you.”
“I think you’re right,” Olson grimaces like he can already hear Garraty’s teasing, sardonic voice in the back of his head. “But I’d still appreciate the company.”
“So what are we doing here, exactly?” Garraty asks as Olson scans the dusty shelves of the dingy off-campus antique store. The bell above the door jingles, signaling a new customer. That had been them not five minutes ago after some intense window-shopping that piqued Olson’s interest.
“I’m looking for a vessel. Think of it like Back to the Future. I’m looking for my De Lorean,” says Olson matter-of-factly.
“You need a hobby,” Garraty says with a mild snort. “Or a girlfriend. Like… desperately.”
“This is my hobby,” Olson shot back, raising an eyebrow. “Got a fucking problem with that? I’m putting my education to good use.”
“Your education how? What are you even looking for?” asks Garraty, quirking an eyebrow.
Olson drags the pad of his finger along a bookshelf before his eyes are drawn to a display of shiny gold trinkets. “I’m just waiting for something to catch my eye.”
“Sure, yeah, right,” Garraty rolls his eyes. “What’s this really about, man? I know Clem dumped you and now you’re all sad and weird, but you don’t need to get all cuckoo over it! There are other girls out there—”
But Olson has already long-tuned him out, off in his own little bubble. He’ll make this happen if it kills him.
“Cuckoo,” Olson mutters to himself as his eyes fall on a small, tarnished pocket watch. “That’s right.”
He picks it up and places it in the palm of his hand, examining it closely. It pops open easily at the top, releasing the cover— which is outfitted with a little heart-shaped window— to reveal the face. The hands don’t move, of course, but Olson is too distracted by the painted bird that lies behind it, taking flight from a cage of gold.
He struggles to close it back up, and upon a closer look, a small, fine-print engraving loops around the underside of the lid.
Tempus neminem manet.
Olson wasn’t an expert in Latin— having taken only one semester to fill his language credit— but he figured he could take an educated guess on what it meant. Time awaits no man.
Olson took that as a challenge. It was fate. He would make time obey him, and this watch would make the perfect vessel for his experiment. He clutches it and turns back to Garraty, who’s staring at him, puzzled and annoyed.
“What do you think?” Olson asks, grinning, dangling the watch between his fingers. He swings it back and forth in an attempt to hypnotize Garraty into being on his side.
“I think you’ve fucking lost your mind, that’s what I think,” Garraty sighs. “I don’t even know why I bother trying to reason with you, Hank. You’re so fucking stubborn.”
“Stubborn people get shit done,” Olson points out, and he’s back to examining the watch. “My ma didn’t raise a fucking quitter.”
“That sounds about right,” says Garraty, lips pursed. “That watch looks fucking haunted, though. I never thought that would be your aesthetic. It’s something I’d expect, I don’t know, Art to be into, maybe.”
“I’m a man of many tastes,” Olson scoffs, clutching the watch in his fist. “What, just because I’m not normally creepy and vintage, I can’t appreciate something pretty?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Eclectic,” Garraty teases.
“I’m surprised you even know what that fucking word means, Ray,” Olson narrows his eyes. “Watch this plan work, and you’ll eat your goddamn words.”
“You’re off your rocker.”
“I’ll be a fucking billionaire,” Olson points a finger at him. “You know how many college kids would kill for the chance at a do-over?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Garraty rolls his eyes. “Did Art enable this?”
“Not important.”
“Right,” Garraty says slowly. “When this all literally blows up in your face, I’ll laugh.”
“You’re a terrible friend,” Olson flicks the watch open and closed a couple times, getting used to the slightly weighted feeling in his hand. The metal is cool to the touch, quickly influenced by the warmth of his palm.
The watch’s own hands don’t move, but it was all a part of the process. He fidgets with the knob at its crown and takes it up to the register, much to Garraty’s chagrin.
Garraty follows him, arms crossed over his chest. “Fine, I’ll humor you. Maybe Pete will, too. But I still think you’re ridiculous.”
Olson shrugs, taking his wallet from his pocket and handing it to the middle-aged woman behind the desk. “Maybe I am.”
The woman takes the watch and scans it before removing the sticker. “We just got this one sold to us. I knew it’d go quick,” she winks at Olson. “You’ve got good taste. It’s pretty.”
Olson grins at her. “Yeah, I think so, too.”
She nods, swiping his card before handing both it and the watch back to him. “It’ll make a wonderful gift.”
Olson nods and puts his wallet back in his pocket, neglecting to acknowledge that it was no gift.
The bell dings as Garraty and Olson leave together, and Olson nudges him playfully. “Did you see that shit? She was totally into me.”
Garraty laughs. “Sure, buddy.”
Olson stayed up all night with his old pocket watch, taking apart and putting it back together, desperate to understand how it worked. It was just a machine, and he had worked with too many machines in his lifetime to not make easy, quick work of this one.
Upon a close inspection into the world of cogs and gears behind its face, Hank Olson was struck down by an idea. If he could get the gears to oscillate quickly enough and retrofit the dial to be wound back, he could do exactly what he talked to Baker about.
The next morning, he immediately went down to one of the workshops in the engineering department, took the backing off the watch, and got to work.
The hands on the watch still didn’t move, of course, so the first thing Olson did was replace the battery, just to make sure it was still capable of movement. When they started to creak forward after years of disuse, they were cattywampus and sat upon completely inaccurate numbers.
Of course, he had no idea what would work, but he had a hunch: In its simplest form, a mechanical watch is just stored energy being released at a controlled rate. The spring tightens, the gear train transfers torque, the escapement meters it out in tiny, precise bursts— it did so much more than measure time, and Olson found himself mesmerized by it. He let himself watch the hands move for a moment before doing what he knew would cease its function.
He studied the balance spring with almost surgical precision. This was the thing that determined frequency, and if he could get it to wind up, he’d have his ticket to the past.
He swapped the original spring for a thinner, alloy replacement from the lab. That way, he’d have higher elasticity with less damping, and a lot more flexibility. He trimmed it shorter, which would give it higher restoring force, and thus, higher oscillation. Olson modified the escapement, the mainspring, removing the click spring entirely and replacing it with a reversible ratchet.
When he was done, any pressure he applied to the dial would act like a wind-up toy. He could wind it the opposite direction, too, when he needed to get back to the present.
Ideally, the force would be so intense that Olson would vibrate right with it and shoot back a couple days, but he was too afraid to test it out just yet. He’d been careful not to touch the dial since he’d tampered with it, convinced that this would work. He kept telling himself that people had moved through time before, and if they could do it, so could he.
He had to admit it was a lot of power for one person to have, and with the watch clutched in his hand he felt almost like a god, even if he was still uncertain about its validity.
He cleaned up after himself and took the watch back to his dorm, where Baker was already waiting for him, reading a book in bed.
“Hey,” Olson breathed out a sigh of relief, holding up the watch weakly, tired after spending hours in the workshop. The sun was setting, casting a stripy shadow through the half-obstructed windows, and it couldn’t be later than seven.
“You look exhausted,” Baker said, a look of mild concern on his face.
“I am,” Olson rubbed his eyes. “I think I’m just gonna go to bed. I want to get a nice night of sleep before my big day.”
Baker nods and reaches over to the lamp on his nightstand, shutting it off, and the room quickly descends into darkness, save for the dim, orange glow of the sunset bleeding through the blinds.
Olson plugs his phone, climbs into bed, and places the pocket watch on his own nightstand. He brings his gaze to the ceiling, and even with it out of sight, he can’t help but feel tempted. He swears he can feel something, only faintly: a small humming in his chest, and he gives in.
He lifts the watch back up, running his fingers through the dull grooves of its design. Maybe one day, long ago, it felt a lot sharper, he thinks. How old was it, really? He’d never stopped to ponder that he’d just thrifted some kind of historical artifact.
Olson lets his eyes flutter shut, letting the soft ticking noise regulate his breathing.
“You are not a god,” he murmurs, so quietly that he doubted even Baker could hear it. “You are only a man.”
Olson wakes with the watch still clutched in his hands, and he feels surprisingly well-rested. The digital clock on his nightstand reads 7:45, and Baker’s already gone from his bed.
They were both early risers, but only Baker had somewhere to be. Olson gets out of bed and moves over to his desk, flipping his laptop open. The eighty-two still stands out among the rest of his stellar grades, and he clicks back into the exam.
To his delight, his professor released all the correct answers. He had until Baker got out of his exam to memorize them. There were only twenty of them. It was an achievable goal.
Olson sent a text to the group chat with himself, Baker, Garraty, and McVries: can you guys make it to the student center at noon?
The responses, save for Baker’s, came back quickly. Affirmative. He quickly booked a study room, one that he knew would be secluded, and took out a notebook— filled with notes from his research over the last few days, and started to jot down the answers over and over again until they were ingrained in his mind. His plan was all coming together.
Olson left his dorm at 11:30, sparing him enough time for the ten-minute walk, plus to grab a snack from the vending machine and to retrieve his study room key from the front desk. It almost looks like a prison cell, with no windows except a thin rectangular slit at the top of the door, but it was perfect for what Olson had in mind.
Baker shows up five minutes early with an extra coffee, which Olson accepts graciously, but Garraty and McVries don’t arrive until 12:10. Which, in the grand scheme of things, didn’t matter all too much, but Olson did value punctuality. But he had other things on his mind, so he didn’t dare poke the bear.
“What was it you wanted to show us?” asks McVries, an almost skeptical look on his face.
Before Olson can respond, Garraty beats him to it: “Oh, shit, I forgot to tell you. Hank’s gonna do a little time travel for us.”
“Really?” McVries’ eyebrows shoot up, and a deep flush spreads across Olson’s cheeks.
“Yeah, I mean—” Olson trails off with a deep breath. “It’s all experimental. It might not even work.”
He fishes into his pocket and brings out the watch, showing it off to McVries in the palm of his hand. “I did a lot of tinkering with it, and I think I could basically shoot myself through time.”
“That’s a whole bunch of STEM major bullshit,” McVries scratches his head, and to Olson’s surprise, says: “But it’s bullshit you might be able to pull off.”
“Really, you think so?” Olson’s face lights up. “Well, I guess I’d better give it a shot.”
He braces to turn the dial at the top, but Garraty stops him. “Wait, what’s the plan? What if you go back, but your clothes don’t, and you’re totally naked?”
Olson pauses. He hadn’t really considered that. Or any of the other standard time travel-related concerns. “I mean, I guess we’re in a pretty private place.”
“And what if you run into your past self?” Baker points out. “Wouldn’t that be a problem?”
“I don’t know if I’d be able to surprise myself, but I guess you make a good point,” Olson shrugs. “I was kind of hoping I’d figure it out as I went along. I’m sort of on a fucking clock here.”
“Show us what you got, then, Hank,” McVries gestures towards him. “I’ll sure be fucking impressed.”
Olson nods, clutching his notebook and pen to his chest. He flips open the watch, exposing its face in order to better demonstrate his point. “So, I took the exam six days ago now, which is roughly a hundred and forty-five hours. The exam was at 4:25, so that time will give me some room to squeeze in a little extra studying and problem-wrangling right before I go back in. That’s when I’ll figure out what to do about my past self or my potential nakedness.”
“Sounds like a plan, Hank,” says McVries. “All luck to you.”
Olson takes the watch back up with shaky hands, wrapping the length of the chain around his wrist as if it’d somehow tether him to the watch even more. If he messed up, even a little bit, it could be catastrophic, so he counts each revolvement around the clock aloud as he turns the dial back.
One, two, three, four, five… all the way up to twelve full turns, plus an extra hour. When he’s reached the final circle, he can’t bring himself to let go. He looks up at his friends with wide eyes for guidance.
“Just let go, Hank,” Garraty says, but Olson knows what he really means is “nothing will happen anyways.” And he knows Baker and McVries are thinking the exact same thing.
Almost out of spite— mostly, a desperation to prove himself— Olson lets go.
Slowly, the dial starts spinning in the opposite direction, just as Olson had predicted. The hands follow, making its way along a backwards path, circling the birdcage painted behind them. It doesn’t seem fast enough, not at first, and Olson wonders if his plan is a dud.
But he can’t take his eyes away from his own hand, the one with the watch, and how the dial has sped up, almost at a blur, one that mirrors Olson’s surroundings. The clock’s ticking dissolves into a continuous whirr, The bird behind the glass seems to stretch and pull beneath the racing hands, its feathery, painted wings elongating into streaks of gold and black, and for a moment, Olson truly believes it’s taking flight.
Everything is vibrating; the watch in his hands, his whole body, the room. Nothing is stationary, not here. It’s not painful, but invasive, like the hum of an electrical current passing through the watch and into his body. The air in the room feels suddenly dense, thick as syrup, pressing against his skin to the point where he thinks he’s beginning to shrink.
Moments slide by him in fragments— flickers of light from the people coming and going from the room, scraps of sound from the AC, the faintest echo of unfamiliar laughter and conversation, until it all disappears completely— each one slipping upward as he descends.
Olson does not tumble wildly or aimlessly; instead, he feels drawn, pulled cleanly through a widening passage, as though time has opened up like a burrow and he’s been invited inside.
It takes a lot of effort for Olson to collect his thoughts, but once he does, he’s hit with the horrific realization that he’s fallen down, down, down the rabbit hole.